RAM in my most-used personal computer:
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RAM's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Informative)
Because my old computers can't go that high? Too bad HDD prices aren't cheap anymore. :(
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
$130 for 2TB external isn't cheap? [amazon.com]
I heard drives are going up in price but they still look pretty cheap to me.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
my last 2TB drive was £59 for an external in June this year. The same drive, from the same store, is now over twice the price [pcworld.co.uk].
Funnily enough, the HDD shortage doesn't seem to have affected the price of built systems any. I wonder who's soaking up the extra subsidy?
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Informative)
hard drive shortage [google.com]
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Informative)
Thailand flood: http://www.google.com/search?q=thailand+hdd+flood [google.com]
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
4gb IS maxed out on my 2009 dell laptop with WinXP.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Informative)
Old machine, 2GB IS maxed out. My other machine has 3GB because I don't want to pull 1GB to get 4GB...yet. Replacing the machine will probably occur first since 4 GB would be maxed out.
Phil
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
$160 is not cheap...It's pretty affordable if you have plenty of disposable income, but it is by no means cheap. That's over a week's worth of food for me.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
$160 is not cheap...It's pretty affordable if you have plenty of disposable income, but it is by no means cheap. That's over a week's worth of food for me.
No it's cheep.. Heck I feed 5 people on $200 a week but that isn't why I think it's cheep.
Us old timers are a little warped by experience.. I remember paying $160 for 16 megs.. WOW That was all the PC could take back then..
I worked for Intel labs back in 2001.. We were building up a 4 proc Itanium box and set that thing up with 64 gigs of memory.. Those 1 gig sticks were $4,000 a pop.. We loaded up a quarter million dollars of memory that day..
So. $160 for 16 gigs.. Dirt cheep!!!
640MB ought to be enough for anybody (Score:5, Funny)
Back in the late 90s I built a computer lab at work, and at one point I bumped up some of the PCs to 640MB, just because it seemed appropriate. My current lab has a couple of VMware servers with 72GB of RAM.
My first VAX came with 4MB, which was the most that would fit in the 2-rack chassis. A year or two later we upgraded it to 8MB, which was possible because they had denser RAM chips, then another year or two later to 16MB. It had 1GB of disk space (4 washing-machine-sized drives, cost $120K); I've currently got 4 GB USB flake in my wallet, and I may have lost another 4GB in the wash at some point. By the late 80s, most of the workstations we used had 8-16MB RAM, but we had a few specialized graphics workstations with 48MB, which let you do all kinds of things in real-enough time.
And back in college, the university mainframe was out of action for a month or so because they'd had trouble adding the fourth megabyte to it (and then another time when there was a plumb leak in the water cooling.) If you ran CMS, you could define a virtual machine that would let you use a whole megabyte! Yourself! (I've forgotten by now what the standard limits had been on non-VM process size.) But if the mainframe was down, one of the operators had a punch-card deck that would let you run 4KB BASIC on the minicomputer that drove the card reader and printer. (And yes, it was uphill both ways in the snow.)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow...really? Are you still in college?
I am single, and I usually do between $160-$200 a week on food and weekly booze. But that's hardly a major chunk out of my wallet.
For someone professional, in the tech world...if you've got a few years experience behind you, $160 should be easily some monthly pocket change you can blow at any time on something. In this day in age, $160 is not very much money...or shouldn't be if you've been in the employed, professional world for more than a couple years. If not...you need to seriously job shop some....you might have to move, but if you're good, I'm seeing jobs all over the place on contract sites....and at the rates they're paying, $160 is pocket change.
"Single" also means "childless" I assume?
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
"Single" also means "childless" I assume?
Sounds like, single, childless, and no mortgage.
Amazing how getting married, having kids, and buying a house can put you on a budget.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a bit more amazed at the douchebaggy tone of that insensitive clod. Avg salary in the United States is about $40k per year. I doubt the average person spends 1/4 of their income on food & booze.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I'm arguing your point, but I think the median personal income is a better metric, since that reduces skew caused by those with ridiculously high salaries.
Wikipedia tells me that at least in 2005 that figure for over 18s was $24,062
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3, Funny)
Or getting just a wife...
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Funny)
Or getting just a wife...
I know. Those shipping costs are atrocious.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Informative)
Well, those are ALL choices one makes.
I guess if you want to sacrifice personal income, time and growth for wife and kids...well, that's a person's choice. Frankly, I really never wanted to have the little 'anchors' in my life.....and I figure the only reason to get married is if you're wanting to have children (good thing to do if you have them). However, with no kids, no reason to get married, and hence, no chance of losing half my shit when I decide to trade up to a different model woman.
I'm not rich by a long shot...but I figure anyone can make choices in life that affect their disposable income....but even with that, if you're living within your means...I can't see anyone gainfully employed for years in the tech industry having $160 break the bank and not be an impulse spend at least once a month.
I mean, even if you're married...don't you have your wife working too?
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess if you want to sacrifice personal income, time and growth for wife and kids...well, that's a person's choice. Frankly, I really never wanted to have the little 'anchors' in my life.....and I figure the only reason to get married is if you're wanting to have children (good thing to do if you have them). However, with no kids, no reason to get married, and hence, no chance of losing half my shit when I decide to trade up to a different model woman.
Having a family and kids doesn't sacrifice growth. You learn a lot of things about responsibility and caring for someone other than yourself. Not that many of us have money during college and for a couple of years afterwards, when we finally do make good money, the odds are pretty good that we'll end up married, and then kids follow. Even if it seems like the money is there, you normally have to talk to your wife before spending $160 on something you want, because now, you are in a partnership. She might point out that the money could be saved and spent on something else...In any case, I suspect that most highly experienced IT professionals have families, usually the single IT professional who's never been married stands out like a sore thumb, and people start to talk.....
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
This another choice that you knowingly allow yourself to make. Two adults should be able to maintain separate incomes, spending, and control of their money in a committed relationship without a problem. This includes rent, bills, and mortgages (though maybe not children? I can't comment on that yet) where you both commit to have an amount paid regularly. I don't think in my current long term relationship I've ever even known the general balance of my partners bank account and I've never wanted to. The important part of a relationship is that you're fair and there to help when needed, if you're able... Pet needs to go to the vet and the other doesn't have the cash up front? Simple. Lost your job and need to be covered for a few months until you're sorted? Tough but you'd expect the same in return. Partner doesn't think you've paid enough of the bills recently? Got it, next few bills are on me.
Allowing your SO to control your bank account is a trade-off that so many people make and then complain about.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Start to talk about what?
I find that most of my friends, and most of them ARE married...tend to live through me vicariously. They are always asking what I'm up to...where I'm going...who I'm dating and what she looks like, etc.
While they're stuck at home in routine, I get to go out, experience new things, travel, meet new people (and sometimes sleep with the good looking female ones), and generally do as I please.
But it is a trade off....if being married and having kids is what you want, and makes you happy...go for it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but it isn't for me. I feel life is too short to do that for myself, it would be losing years of my life I've spent having fun.
I have tons of friends, and women are out there all over the place...I don't feel the need to tie myself down to one of them. There is just too much variety out there to just settle for one, but that's just my opinion and my choice.
However, I don't know that anyone talks bad about me as you seem to allude to....if anything, people seem to see my way of life as interesting, in that it is so different than the 'norm'...of school...marriage...kids...stuck in same town for life....etc.
Do I miss having kids? Well, you might as well as me if I miss having brothers and sisters...how would I know? All I know is my life, and my experiences...and so far, I'm quite happy with it...
I don't put others down for their choice (if it makes you happy and you don't bitch about it)...I don't understand why anyone would think less of mine.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, those are ALL choices one makes.
Yes, it is a choice, and I choose the loving wife and fun kids over being able to upgrade RAM on a whim. No contest.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
Well, those are ALL choices one makes.
Yes, it is a choice, and I choose the loving wife and fun kids over being able to upgrade RAM on a whim. No contest.
For some reason, this quote came to mind:
"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
Socrates - Greek philosopher in Athens (469 BC - 399 BC)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow...really? Are you still in college?
I am single, and I usually do between $160-$200 a week on food and weekly booze. But that's hardly a major chunk out of my wallet.
For someone professional, in the tech world...if you've got a few years experience behind you, $160 should be easily some monthly pocket change you can blow at any time on something. In this day in age, $160 is not very much money...or shouldn't be if you've been in the employed, professional world for more than a couple years. If not...you need to seriously job shop some....you might have to move, but if you're good, I'm seeing jobs all over the place on contract sites....and at the rates they're paying, $160 is pocket change.
"Single" also means "childless" I assume?
This I agree with. There are a lot of expenses if you're involved with someone (especially someone who doesn't work in the tech industry), or if you have student/car/house loans to pay off. Moving and/or switching jobs isn't always viable.
In my case, I spent a little time supporting another person on the salary, as well as purchasing a car (where the down payment took out half my savings). From my point of view, the $100 difference from not maxing out my ram could mean having a pretty nice night out, or a cheapo southwest ticket somewhere 10 hours away, or even could be worth just putting it into savings.
And the savings thing really did pay off for me, as it gave me the option financially to drop everything and move across the country when I wanted to.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow...really? Are you still in college?
I take it you don't cook for yourself. Combined, my wife and I probably spend $75-$100 per week on food. We'll cook dinner one night and finish off the left-overs for lunch the next day.
We do it for multiple reasons. It saves money so that we can take 1 trip each year out of the country. It is typically a more healthy option. We even bake our own bread twice a week. Dough is made from scratch as well. Finally, it allows us to spend some quality time together.
Your entire post just sounded like you were bragging about having a good salary that you can blow as you see fit. My wife and I's yearly income is 3x what the average household income is for my area but we don't see the need to spend it just because we have it.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I *do* cook for myself...about 99% of my meals are home cooked. I buy my food generally once a week..Sat or Sun...and cook mostly enough for eating on all week, lunches and dinners (I do green smoothies daily for moring breakfast)...I also juice too to supplement. I don't have time during the week much to cook, so I do it all at once so I can have time aside from work to go to the gym 3-4 days a week...etc.
This saves me a TON of money. I buy in bulk when I can...I start planning my menu seeing what is on sale at the various grocery stores, and build my weekly menus around that.
No, I've avoided kids...don't want them. And I change women when I get tired of them and get a new one. At my age now...I tend to only date women who have their own careers going, so I don't have to support anyone.
I'm saving for a downpayment on a house. I save..etc.
I just don't see $160 as an expenditure that should break anyone's bank that is generally on slashdot in the tech industry...and isn't a student.
I would say I easily average $100-$200 a week, depending on what I cook or staples I run out of...or if I'm thirsty for a nice bottle of single malt scotch for that weekend, or if I'm at home myself or if I'm dating that weekend/week.
But yes I cook, and I tend to do as much as humanly possible from scratch. I don't buy premixed or heavily processed foods. Hell, I have my own meat grinder that I often use to grind and stuff my own sausages from scratch. I'm trying to stay low carb...so, not much baking...however, now that I got a Vitamix with the dry grains blender...I am thinking of trying my own whole wheat flour breads from time to time starting from whole wheat berries. I also like to home brew beer....etc.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
I think you're also missing another factor - why spend $160 on something you don't (yet) need? I have 4GB of RAM on my main machine, which is also a gaming rig. I have yet to reach a situation where having more than this sweet spot of RAM would pay dividends. Just because I can put more in doesn't mean I can be arsed doing so, because I don't really do anything that requires it.
"Just because you can" isn't a good excuse to do something when it costs money, regardless of whether you think it's inexpensive or not.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
It keeps coming back to that. I understand. I also used to think that. In fact, when I was married and had one kid, I had $1,000 discretionary spending in the budget every month. Now I have 4 kids and a $50 game purchase is something I have to spend time justifying to myself. It is not even really the children, it is more the economy. You really need to make 6 figures to be able to have 4 kids and have a comfortable lifestyle, and although I used to make 6 figures, I don't any more.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
The $1 Banquet TV dinners I lived on in college were one thing, but the cost of fresh food has gone through the roof recently. I could buy fast food for lunch and a decent restaurant for dinner every day and it would be cheaper than groceries.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
Are you in the USA? I've heard consultants that come up to Canada from the USA marvel at how cheap our fresh fruits and veggies, are and what a fine selection we have - and they went to the local supermarket, not even a farmers market. From what I have read and seen, processed junk food is much cheaper in the USA than in Canada. In the part of Canada I live in it is WAY cheaper to cook at home compared to eating out, even at a fast food place.
The USA government subsidies corn and other bulk crops, but not veggies or fruit which seems to distort your food prices. I think the USA must have cheaper labour costs too for fast food to be so cheap.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
How much does your food cost then?
As an example, on Sunday I cooked a massive spaghetti bolognese (sort of, don't tell any Italians). It was supposed to feed four, but we (me + my housemate) were greedy and ate the whole thing. I'd forgotten lunch, and he'd forgotten lunch and breakfast (Skyrim...).
So, realistically serves about 4, and being generous with the prices (rounding up everything):
- 400g frozen minced beef, £1.80
- two large carrots, 30p
- two 400g cans of chopped tomato, 90p
- a large onion, 20p
- 150g mushrooms, 45p
- two cloves of garlic, 5p
- beef stock cube/powder, 10p
- a little oil, 10p
- 300g wholewheat spaghetti, 55p
- slosh (75ml?) of cheap wine bought for cooking (£4 per bottle), 40p
- herbs and spices (including my mum's magic ingredient), 20p
- gas, 30p? I have no idea, the cost for cooking is probably small compared to the cost for heating
Prices from Tesco, my nearest supermarket. (Checked on here [mysupermarket.co.uk].)
That's £5.35. I think that might buy you one fast-food 'meal', but that won't feed two, let alone four. A basic restaurant will charge at least £6 per person, plus £2 for a soft drink. A decent place will cost £9 to £12 for the meal.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
400g Ground Beef $6.17
2 Large Carrots $0.75
800g Fresh Tomatoes $7.05
1 Large Onion $1.00
150g Mushrooms $2.00
2 Cloves Garlic $0.10
Beef Stock $0.50 (guessing)
Oil $0.05
300g Whole Wheat Spaghetti $2.50
Wine (1/10 bottle) $1.20
Herbs and Spices $0.50
Energy $2.60 (1/2 of 1 day electric bill for stove, hot water, well pump)
Total $24.42, £15.48 (according to Google)
A decent meal at a restaurant can be had for $9/person. Lets say $20 for a couple, tip included. £12.70.
And it only gets worse from there. Those ingredients are relatively inexpensive. My jaw drops every time I see the price of red bell peppers or grapefruit at $5.00 each. I'm not sure how restaurants have kept prices down, but it seems like grocery prices have doubled over the last few years.
With all due respect... (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you know his circumstances? How much money he pays for his student loans? The fact that he's working in a place (e.g., Iowa City) that has lots of people with high-tech degrees, but not much opportunity for them to make use of them? I don't know these things, either, but the tone of your reply is really rather haughty and uncalled-for, especially as one considers the realities of a recession, high unemployment and underemployment, etc. For the record, I'm making good coin -- approaching certitude better than your are -- but I remember the days of putting extra ketchup on my burger 'cause I couldn't afford much else.
I'm glad you're doing well. But scoffing at those who have less disposable income lacks class and/or empathy.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
I eat a lot, and don't spend near that.
I mostly cook my own except for lunch, and I very rarely drink.
Guess I have cheap tastes.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm from Portugal, and back here the minimum wage goes for 475 euros. That's about 640 dollars. That's a monthly salary. There are quite a lot of people who are forced to live with that pay check.
The average monthly wage is reported to be a bit less than 900 euros, but as there is a considerable problem with income disparity the median tends to be considerably bellow this. From what I gather, the median salary tends to be a bit over 600 euros.
Rent is also a problem. The cheapest 2-bedroom apartments go for around 350 euros a month. Oddly enough, purchasing the same house tends to be cheaper than that (mortgage payments around 250 euros/month) but not everyone has access to credit, whether due to uncertain job prospects or not being able to put together enough money for a down payment. Banks tend to cover at most 80% of the current house price. A crummy 2-bedroom apartment in a notoriously crime-infested area, which is the cheapest one which I currently get from a real-estate site, goes for 36000 euros. This means that any prospective buyer must have at least 7 thousand euros to be able to get a mortgage on it. Can you imagine how hard it is to save 7 thousand euros on a 475€/month salary, where 350€ go for the rent?
Public transportation costs around 50 euros a month. The electric, water and gas bills combined tend to go for between 50 and 100 euros. And it tends to be a good idea to eat once in a while.
Meanwhile, 4GB of RAM for my desktop goes for around 40 euros.
So, not everyone has 160 dollars to max out on RAM.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
You can afford it doesn't mean everyone else can! Also, most people who cannot afford $160 would have their computer for as long as they can keep. Therefore, 2GB is likely to be what they have to run most software nowadays.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
16 GB only cost $160, so why not max it out?
Because my computer can take a lot more than 16 GB, and that would be expensive. However, 16 is a comfy amount these days for 64-bit OSes.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
My macbook pro maxes out at 8.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no point in buying something you dont need. Have 16GB will only be useful in a few applications, most of those are probably for business. This is especially true for a memory efficient kernel like Linux or BSD.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
Ever hear of virtual engines? All my work is done inside VM's now so 8 gig is needed to keep all of them happy. Virtualbox rocks!
I use KSM to massively reduce the memory requirements of my virtual machines.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
Adding a SSD is the fastest way nowadays. Nothing made my Mac faster than having a SSD inside. I would even argue, thanks to SSD most people will not need more than 4GB of RAM. Basically because the swapping is so fast that the lag is much less visible, if at all, compared to swapping to the good old spinning disks.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Funny)
my old laptop that i got rid of this year maxed out at 48mb and had a 1.2 gb hdd
i would have kept it, it had no battery though and i didn't want to root it's password since it was still a floppy drive model. (no optical drive)
but it ran debian and windows 95 just fine except the bsod problem with win95, and not remembering the debian password.
So, it ran great, except for all the problems that it had.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
16 GB only cost $160, so why not max it out?
$160 was approximately what 2 GB cost me a year or so ago. Older machine, more expensive memory. I went from 1GB to 3GB, only for heavy image processing. Nothing else I do needs more than a fraction of that.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
$160? You got ripped off [newegg.com].
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
Indeed; it's quite amazing what's happened to the price of RAM.
RAM capacity has been in a boom cycle for the better part of the year (and as a result prices have been bust), but the hard drive shortage has really taken a hammer to RAM and other commodity prices. RAM, optical disk drives, etc are all seeing prices crash as manufacturers have more supply on-hand than there will be hard drives to pair it with. Most of these components are only sold once - at the time of sale of a new computer - so now that we're looking at 20% fewer hard drives for the next couple of quarters, there's 20%-25% too much of everything else.
Of course the flip side is that this is driving commodity manufacturers to cut production. Which means in about a year RAM and other commodity prices will spike, and likely more than usual.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
Because my Mac Pro can take a lo more than 16GB.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
16 GB only cost $160, so why not max it out?
Because I don't do anything that requires heaps of RAM. My main Mac has 4 GB, which is plenty for what I do - and I'm typing this message on my 7 year old G4 PowerBook which has 1.5GB of RAM and I've never even felt the need to upgrade it to the maximum 2 GB.
I guess I just don't need heaps of RAM to send emails, post messages on Slashdot, and run a Terminal window to SSH in to anything I have to do real work on!
Re:Mobile Internet is expensive (Score:3)
Good luck SSHing or VNCing while riding the bus to and from work. City buses where I live don't have Wi-Fi. Sometimes you need a bit of local computing power, but I'll admit the things I do on my laptop don't need multi-gigabytes of RAM.
I can't say I've ever felt the need to use Public Transport to get to and from work, but if I did, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't try to VNC or SSH on to anything during the journey. Maybe this is how I get by with a small amount of RAM?
Incidentally, I'm typing this on a mobile dongle as I'm not near any wired or wireless network tonight. The mobile package I have is pretty cheap - about £15 per month for unlimited bandwidth. I've never noticed any particular performance issues with SSH on this setup, and don't use VNC, so couldn't comment on that one
Re:Mobile Internet is expensive (Score:3)
ouch.
300 voice minutes
3,000 texts
unlimited (read: all you can eat) data.
£15/mo.
Hutchison 3G UK.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:2)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
Because I really don't have a need for it and as such it'd be a total waste of money?
Because US$160 is well over a month worth of daily lunches (just having a simple hot meal in a restaurant)?
Because my computer is too old to support that much?
Plenty of reasons not to have that much. But then my home PC will get an upgrade within the upcoming year or two. It's about 5 years old now. It handles 720p video fine, but the currently used 10-bit is just over the edge. That's slowly getting irritating. By then I'll probably have 4 GB or more.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
16 GB only cost $160, so why not max it out?
Got $160 I could borrow.
Pay ya back next Friday, honest.
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
16 GB only cost $160
Actually provided you are buying 4GB sticks of ordinary desktop DDR3 it's a lot cheaper than that. I see prices on newegg of $20 per stick which works out to $80 for 16GB.
If you want larger modules or any other type of memory it's quite a bit more than that.
so why not max it out?
Are you implying that 16GB is maxing it out for current machines? LGA1155 boxes max out at 32GB which currently costs arround $500.
If I was building a new machine now for general use i'd probablly build with 8GB (the same ammount I have in my office desktop) initially with the intention of going to 24GB or 32GB if/when I needed more ram (hopefully by that time 8GB sticks will have dropped to a similar cost per gigabyte as 4GB ones).
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
And if the address lines aren't all connected?
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
Re:RAM's cheap (Score:3)
He's right. I have 12GB of RAM in my gaming PC running fatassed Win7, and the only time more than half has ever been used is when I found out that ScanDisk + no swap = full RAM + crashed ScanDisk.
Unless you do heavy VM work, anything more than 6GB right now is something between "futureproofing" and "a big fat waste."
Missing option: "I don't know" (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to know this stuff!! I built my first 286 PC in 1988, 512KB with 64k DIPs and an RLL 30MB HDD, and then later worked in a benchmark lab tuning Windows 95 & WinNT 3.5 systems for a few years (when Hdd storage was $1/MB).
Today I have no idea how much ram is in my Mac Mini or my Iphone.
I'm officially an "old codger."
*sigh*
Is Matlock on?
Re:Missing option: "I don't know" (Score:2)
Feh. When I started, my "most-used personal computer" had 4 Kilobytes (.000004 Gbytes). And a less-than-2-Mhz Z-80 processor. And I would have killed for a FLOPPY drive, instead of recording software onto audio cassettes at 300 bps and hoping they'd play back correctly when I needed to load the program again.
Now get off my prehistoric ocean bottom, you crazy kids!
on-topic P.S.: my current "most currently used" computer has 8Gb, and it's pretty much good enough for World of Warcraft. The 80 Gb SSD is a winner, too. Boots quick into Win 7 and runs WoW off the SSD lickety-split.
Re:Missing option: "I don't know" (Score:2)
You haven't lived until you've soldered DIMM's together to double your memory and hand wired your new keyboard.
I miss my old Coco.. I spent months typing in code from those stupid magazines..
Re:Missing option: "I don't know" (Score:2)
Numlock is on. Capslock was until the lameness filter kicked in. Matlock, I can't even find that one.
Re:Missing option: "I don't know" (Score:2)
Durn -- I shoulda thought of that. Good call.
Sorry!
timothy
Re:Missing option: "I don't know" (Score:2)
That is why I record them like in my history: http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html [zimage.com] ... ;)
Re:Missing option: "I don't know" (Score:3)
I said BUILT not USED.
The first PC I ever programmed was a Commodore PET. I remember playing some godzilla game that loaded up via cassette and used the extended ascii graphic chars. I even remember the warm chirping sound it made on bootup.
I suspect we are both going to be owned by a mini-computer user in 3... 2... 1..
What, How, Sorry. (Score:2)
Just wanted to remind you of the most useless error messages ever.
My Apple ][ was a better computer then your Trash-80.
2GB in my Cr-48 (Score:2)
which I use a lot more often than my 8GB desktop machine on account of having a two-year-old daughter.
phones (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people are remembering to consider their phones as possibly their "most-used personal computer"?
Re:phones (Score:2)
How many people are remembering to consider their phones as possibly their "most-used personal computer"?
Who the hell uses their phone more than their PC?
I know a few that probably do, like my overly talkative sister. But for myself, my phone isn't even in the top three. I'm probably an exception, since I use my phone primarily as an XBMC remote.
Can't Slashdot have more options? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean come on, lumping together so many choices is just dumb, especially the most popular choices. We're in 2011, we know the most popular ones are going to be between 1 and 16GB.
1GB+ to 2GB = 279 votes / 9%
2GB+ to 4GB = 903 votes / 31%
4GB+ to 8GB = 959 votes / 33%
8GB+ to 16GB = 566 votes / 19%
But we don't know how many have 1, 2, 4 or 8GB. That's just stupid poll choices.
Re:Can't Slashdot have more options? (Score:3)
Answers Explained (Score:5, Informative)
256MB (or less): My main computer is an iPad 1, iPhone 3GS, or low-end android phone
256+ to 512MB: My main computer is an iPad 2, iPhone 4/4S, or a mid-range android phone
512+ MB to 1GB: My main computer is a high-end android tablet
1GB+ to 2GB: My main computer is about 5 years old
2GB+ to 4GB: My main computer is about 3 years old
4GB+ to 8GB: My main computer is about 1-2 years old
8GB+ to 16GB: My main computer is a high-end workstation
More than 16GB: My main computer is a server
Not quite (Score:2)
Modern desktops take 16GB no problem. $100 gets you a matched set of for 4GB sticks of high quality DDR3 RAM that Sandy Bridge based systems will use. 16GB is now a "regular desktop" amount of RAM. You can have it on a normal system.
32GB, actually you can do that on a standard SB system too. There are 8GB sticks. Right now they are expensive enough that few would choose to, but it is possible. You needn't have a workstation or server.
Re:Answers Explained (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Answers Explained (Score:3)
If a computer doesn't have at least 16GB now it either is cheap, old, or a rip-off.
No. It's because I've never needed more than 4GB.
16 GB? How about 16MB: (Score:2)
Well, I'm cheating. Sorta. My most used computer has 2 GB.
But my second most used computer has a whole 16 MB. (486 PC that I use for retro games.)
Re:16 MB? How about a few kB: (Score:3)
"Personal" as in "personal property"? (Score:2)
Whoops (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whoops (Score:3)
The ranges are poorly chosen, since the most common values (2^n) are at the boundaries. He should have just asked us to round it off to the nearest power of 2.
You insensitive clod! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You insensitive clod! (Score:3)
Slackware? Sounds like some kind of prepackaged easy route for sissies. I started with some .1 kernel I saw posted in comp.os.minix, and created a MMU, VM, and web browser for it. Never bothered to implement javascript and flash, that stuff sucks anyways.
_____
moh ah, 4ch
int 21h
Re:Definitions (Score:5, Funny)
If you're on Slashdot and can't figure out what your PC is then hopefully you will drown in a pool of your own pedanticosity.
Re:32 GB in my Mac Pro (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say for a consumer computer nowadays, which come with 2GB minimum, an SSD should be the first upgrade. The difference is like night and day,
Re:32 GB in my Mac Pro (Score:2)
Meh, if you never reboot, RAM is cheaper and faster than having an SSD.
All your OS stuff gets cached to RAM, and as long as that doesn't expire, your expensive small SSD isn't going to make your system perform any faster than your big cheap HDD for most applications.
Well, unless you're always upgrading your OS and core apps. Updating is the new rebooting I suppose.
Why I reboot (Score:2)
if you never reboot
I reboot because I've found that my laptop doesn't hold a charge if I let it sleep for several days straight, and hibernate is as slow as cold boot anyway.
Re:32 GB in my Mac Pro (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:32 GB in my Mac Pro (Score:5, Informative)
Memory is the first thing you should upgrade, followed by an SSD.
One size does not fit all.
There are valid reasons that memory should be a primary concern for upgrade just as there are valid reasons your processor, video card, or hard drive may be more optimal for immediate upgrade. While this is an extreme example, I guarantee an old Duron processor running in a server motherboard with 16GB of ram will lose every benchmark test to a new i7 running alongside 2GB of ram.
It also depends on what you're doing:
Is it a file server for a small set of files? - the solid state would probably be better.
Is it a gaming machine? Perhaps a video card or better processor would be more cost-effective.
I'm not saying that more memory is bad, I just hate it when people think it's a one-size-fits-all scenario.
Re:32 GB in my Mac Pro (Score:4, Informative)
Price for performance though, in a typical, non-optimized, userland PC; RAM is always the first place to look. Put simply, unless you have good reason to suspect otherwise, upgrade your RAM first. Even if it's a file server there are lots of instances where more RAM will show a bigger speed boost than an SSD thanks to caching and prefetching, especially when you can cost effectively offer the PC 2-4x more RAM than the base system and services need to run, that excess will get soaked up by prefetching whatever files you use more frequently.
Is it a silver bullet that will kill any mythical creature? No, of course not, there will always be situations where other upgrades make more sense. But it is a regular old lead bullet, which will quite effectively kill 99% of the more mundane animals who might try to attack you.
Re:32 GB in my Mac Pro (Score:2)
While I agree with your post in general, your example of "a file server with a small set of files" isn't the best example of a case for a SSD. If that "small set of files" can fit into RAM, then a SSD isn't going to buy you much benefit outside of initially being quicker to read the data into memory. However file servers really are data set dependent, so without knowing the details, it's hard to say what's the best upgrade.
RAM is definitely not always the most beneficial upgrade for personal computers. Adding RAM definitely suffers diminishing returns to scale (which is generally true with everything, but RAM benefits seem to diminish more rapidly). It has been my experience that RAM beyond 4GB is much less beneficial than a SSD for typical personal computer usage. For example I upgraded my personal laptop from a 7200 RPM drive to a SSD and from 4GB to 8GB, and the SSD improvement is significantly more noticeable.
Re:32 GB in my Mac Pro (Score:2)
Re:A quarter gig of RAM is actually a helluva lot! (Score:2)
Re:256mb (Score:5, Interesting)
I have one. Dell PIII 300Mhz laptop, running Win2000. Used mainly for vehicle diagnostics, as none of my other portable machines have a serial port that the OBD-II cable can plug in to. Yes, I could buy a USB OBD-II cable. But this one 'just works'. Used it just last week, to help fix a friends car.
It's also used as a tethered camera controller for one of my older cameras, and as a secondary, mobile sound system for halloween and xmas audio effects.
Re:256mb (Score:3)
Yes, I could buy a USB OBD-II cable.
They tend to swing to only 6V instead of 12V. So there is plenty of equipment (PLCs, HMIs, ROM programmers, etc) that won't work at all with those. Which is why my main work machine is a refurbished Dell D630 with 4Gb and a proper RS232 port.
In other words, stick with that PIII.
Re:256mb (Score:3)
Hey, it's my Classic Quake gaming machine! But equipped with an nvidia graphics card! =)
What do you mean, there have been *other* games??
Re:Defective categories (Score:5, Informative)
So, going to the store means you stop right outside the door?